Using Culture For Creating A Greener Future For Coventry

Gaia, at the Old Cathedral, a sculpture designed to raise environmental awareness by Luke Jerram

The Green Futures programme, which was a key strand of UK CoC 2021 activity, clearly facilitated engagement from people and groups who had previously not visited the green spaces of Coventry. This was facilitated by the emphasis of many of the events upon encouraging people to engage with nature and environmental issues in a personal and localised way.

Sharing The Stories From UK City of Culture

In February, Fargo Village in Coventry hosted an event titled ‘Connecting, place, culture, research and impact – stories from Coventry’. The event brought together artists, researchers, local organisations, and members of the public to explore the learning outcomes from the UK CoC 2021, to consider its legacy for the city of Coventry and how the legacy of this can be researched.

One panel focused on the findings and contributions of focus studies commissioned by the Coventry City of Culture Trust to evaluate different aspects of City of Culture activities. One of these focus studies evaluated how successfully the environmental theme had been integrated into the strategy and programme of Coventry UK CoC 2021. This was especially interesting as this was the first time that a theme focusing upon the environment had been integrated into a UK City of Culture event.

The Green Futures events delivered learning opportunities and encouraged people to be involved, make new connections and engage directly with nature and the environment. These events ignited personal interests and raised people’s awareness of a wide range of environmental issues. Importantly, it also demonstrated how a community-focused approach with co-operation between local communities, green and or environmental organisations and key local decision makers can increase engagement in nature and wider green issues.

Cultural Events Are Important For Raising Environmental Awareness

The event held at Fargo Village focused on the learnings that can be gained from the staging of Coventry UK CoC 2021 as part of the UK Cities of Culture project.  The event also considered how to ensure that the City of Culture programme has a lasting legacy and can shape change in the future of the city.  Environmental issues became an important strand for UK CoC 2021 activities through the Green Futures programme and our research has demonstrated how this was important for raising awareness at both individual and organisational levels, which will hopefully help to shape a greener and more environmentally aware future for the city.

Acknowledgments

This article was written by research teams that included Dr Jennifer Ferreira, Dr David Bek, Dr Geraldine Brown, Dr Margi Lennartsson-Turner and Dr Jordon Lazell.

The research teams were based at the Coventry University Centre for Business in Society and Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience research centres.

This post was first published on the Coventry University Research Blog.